The Ignoranceof Blood

12

Flight London/Seville – Saturday, 16th September 2006, 20.15 hrs

He hadn't been able to respond. He'd waited for those words all this time and when they'd come he couldn't say them back. Why not? Because the words that had so comforted her and elicited those heavily guarded and locked-away sentiments had come from the office of Inspector Jefe Javier Falcon. He'd said those words to hundreds of people staring down the empty luge run that opened up when they learned that somebody close to them had been murdered. It had been taught to him by a retired Norwegian detective at the police academy back in the 1980s. When Per Aarvik had told them that the luge run was unavoidable for those closest to the victim, he'd had to start by describing what a luge run was. Its icy insanity sounded terrifying to a class of Spanish twenty-year-olds. And, as Per Aarvik said, everybody went through it, but if you wanted someone to be of use to you in your investigation you had to focus their mind, steady their nerve, point them in the right direction and, by the time you let them go, make them believe that you would be with them to the end. If you said it right, if you believed in it yourself, they would love you as they would close family.

Consuelo loved him for the course he'd done at the police academy. Per would have been proud.

Clear the mind. This is avoidance thinking. He could see what was happening to him. The stress of the flight had been terrible, even though, with the plane full, they'd had to put him in business class. He'd sipped a whisky and water, gnawed on his thumbnail and writhed deeper into his luxurious seat at the thought of Dario in the hands of strangers. She would know as soon as she looked into his face that he was guilty, that he was the cause of her most loved son's abduction.

If he told her she would not forgive him.

If he didn't tell her she would never forgive him.

There was only hope in the first course of action.

And he'd have to find the boy.

He called Cristina Ferrera as he trotted through the arrivals hall at Seville airport. It was 10.35 p.m., he'd lost an hour to the time difference. Ferrera had stayed with Marisa for two hours and the Cuban hadn't cracked. She'd walked her home, given her some aspirin and put her to bed. Marisa hadn't even been prepared to confirm that it was the Russians who'd taken her sister and who were putting her under such extreme pressure not to talk. She wouldn't admit to knowing Vasili Lukyanov. She wouldn't talk about the purpose of her relationship with Calderon. She'd never got drunk enough to forget her fear.

'You took her home,' said Falcon. 'That's good.'

'I think I'm all she's got.'

'What are you doing tonight?'

'I'm going to bed so that I can get up tomorrow to take the kids to the beach on the way down to Cadiz for lunch with my mother.'

'Of course you are.'

'And you?'

'I thought I'd do the first shift on a twenty-four-hour surveillance of Marisa Moreno.'

'For which you have no budget,' said Ferrera. 'What about Consuelo?'

'I don't think she'll want to see me for very long.'

'You're going to tell her?'

'The alternative is not an option.'

'I'll go and sit outside Marisa's apartment. Relieve me when you can.'

'What about the kids?'

'My neighbour's good for a few hours, but I'm not going to be able to get to Marisa's immediately,' she said. 'I haven't eaten.'

'As soon as you can.'

Falcon kept on the run to his car where he called Inspector Jefe Tirado from the Crimes Against Children squad. They'd already spoken at Heathrow. Tirado was on the road somewhere.

'I've just left Senora Jimenez,' he said. 'She's with her sister and her other two boys. She's remarkably calm. A doctor's been round to check her out – blood pressure, that kind of thing. She's fine. He's given her some sleeping pills and something for anxiety, which she says she won't take.'

'How's it going on your side?'

'The big news is that we've found them on CCTV.'

'Good footage?'

'Not bad, but not a lot of it. Senora Jimenez has it with her. She's looking at it.'

'Any more witnesses?'

'We haven't been able to add much more detail beyond what Cristina Ferrera found out this morning,' said Tirado. 'We have to hope that when they said they wouldn't make contact they were just adding a level of threat. It would be unusual if they didn't make demands eventually, but I reckon they'll make her sweat until Monday.'

'What about the press?'

'It was too late for the Sunday editions and I wanted to hold back on the Monday papers, give Senora Jimenez some time to collect herself. It will be big news. We made some announcements on local radio so they're pushing for the story, and I've a feeling that Canal Sur are already sniffing around the Jefatura.'

'I'm going to mount some surveillance on Marisa Moreno.'

'Cristina Ferrera told me about her,' said Tirado. 'So you think the Russians will make contact?'

'Can you spare any manpower for the surveillance?'

'I thought you might ask me that,' he said. 'Look, Javier, you've got a good theory about why the boy was taken, but I can't give up on all other lines of inquiry just yet. If they'd made contact and we were in negotiations, then that would be different. But I've got to find this guy who assaulted her near the Plaza del Pumarejo and, according to her sister, appeared later at her house. I haven't started on her business associates and I haven't even looked at the enemies of Raul Jimenez. And it is his son we're talking about. I never knew the guy, but I've heard he wasn't everybody's friend. You know what they say about revenge.'

Still close to 36°C at 11.00 p.m. Falcon pulled away from the airport with the faint smell of jet fuel coming through the air-con. It made him think of escape. His palms were sweaty. Yes, he wouldn't mind escaping now. He tried to think of things to say to Consuelo. Still nothing believable from the heart came to him. That thoroughfare seemed to be blocked off, barricaded with guilt.

Cars flashed past him on the motorway; he'd slowed to just sixty kilometres per hour, his reluctance for the next scene subconsciously finding its way to his foot. He crossed the ring road. The Barrio de Santa Clara was just there, an enclosed nest of wealth surrounded by industrial zones and the drug dens of Poligono San Pablo.

He parked. Rang the bell at the gate. The front door opened. A silhouette appeared. He walked into her arms like an impostor. Felt her warm breath on his fraudulent neck. Some wetness touched his cheating cheek. He held her. She clung to him tightly. He patted her back, because he'd been told that it reminded everyone of the comforting memory of their mother's beating heart from the womb.

'We have to talk,' said Falcon.

'Let's go upstairs,' she said. 'They're all in the living room.'

She'd set up a television in the bedroom. There was a dent at the foot of the bed where she'd been sitting, taking time out from other people and watching the CCTV footage.

'It hasn't been on the news yet, has it?' asked Falcon.

'Not yet. They've kept it out of the press, too, once we saw this,' she said, and pressed the remote.

Black and white. The same as the noir films that had drawn him to police work in the beginning. But this was grey and uninteresting, the camera static, at a dull angle from above. The flat glass of the sports goods shop was visible on one side. The tiled floor was matt, empty, and then suddenly full of two dark-haired men, one in a long-sleeved shirt, the other in a polo shirt, both carrying other clothing. They stopped, looked, and moved off away from the camera.

'What about the other angle?'

'That's coming.'

There they were again, but caps on now, heads down, jackets on, too, hands buried in pockets, moving away from the shop.

'They know what they're doing,' said Falcon.

'That's how they look in all the other footage,' said Consuelo. 'They only took their hats and jackets off to check us out in the shop.'

'What about footage from outside the stadium?'

'It's coming,' she said. 'It's all been laid down on this tape.'

'Anything from the people serving in the Sevilla Futbol Club shop?'

'Nothing. The shop was full and busy. They didn't even see Dario,' said Consuelo. 'This is the confirmation of what Cristina found out from the couple in their apartment on Avenida de Eduardo Dato.'

It was over in a fraction of a second. Rewind. Play. Rewind. Play. Rewind. Freeze frame. Consuelo circled the three figures in the background of the screen.

'Dario is wearing a scarf. The guy on the right is carrying the football boots. They're the same men picked up by CCTV in the Nervion Plaza, jackets, baseball caps.'

'That's all they've got outside the shopping centre?'

He sat down with her on the end of the bed, leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands in prayer over his nose. She rewound the tape, played the footage again, hoping that his police brain would pick something out that she hadn't herself.

'Talk me through your shopping trip,' he said, turning off the television. 'I want to know every centimetre and second of what you did from the moment we finished that call I made to you from the airport this morning. Every detail, every minuscule, unimportant detail that stuck in your brain. Every phone call you made and received. You're never off that phone these days. The reception isn't always good in these shopping centres, you probably had to walk around. What did you see? I want you to talk without interruption.'

Falcon locked the bedroom door, turned the lights off, leaving just a bedside lamp glowing in the corner. He took out his notebook. Consuelo started with the heartbreaking moment that had lodged itself in her chest, when Dario had asked her: 'Do you still love me now that Javi is with us?' Falcon couldn't bear to look up. He nodded when he heard her reply. She looked out of the dark window, at their reflection with the lamp, almost a cosy scene. He let her talk. Only every so often did he break in to coax out more detail from her, just so that her brain didn't get lazy and glide over what appeared to be unimportant. He wanted the whole thing to play like a movie in her mind. He wanted to see what her camera saw. She took him through the moment she first saw the two men.

'Both Spanish. I'd say in their twenties. One thick set, conventional hair, side parted, eyebrows sliding off the side of his face, nose a little fat as if he might have broken it, clean shaven, good teeth. The other thin, long hair, two lines running down from his cheekbones to his jaw, forehead creased.'

'How did you see his forehead if he had long hair?'

'He wore it tucked behind his ears.'

'What shirt was he wearing?'

'He was in the long-sleeved shirt. Dark blue. He wore it untucked. The thick-set guy had a Lacoste shirt on. The little crocodile. Dark green.'

'Feet?'

'I can't see their feet.'

'In their hands?'

'The jackets. Yes, I remember thinking: Jackets, on a day like this? The car computer said it was 40°C when we went into the underground car park.'

'Colour?'

'Dark. I can't say more than that.'

He played the footage again. He watched it on his hands and knees, face close up to the screen. She sat behind him on the bed. He froze the frame just as the three figures came out of the shop.

'They'll work on that shot, get it sharp and publish it in the press,' he said. 'Then we'll interview all these people standing around…'

'But who are these guys?' she asked, joining him on her knees, tapping the screen.

They turned to each other and she saw it straight away in the light coming from the trembling image.

'You know something,' she said, blinking. 'What do you know, Javier?'

He couldn't bear to be so close to her. He got to his feet. She came up with him.

'You don't know these men, do you?' she asked. 'You can't know them. How can you know them?'

'I don't know them,' he said. 'But I do know that my work is responsible…'

'Your work. How can your work be responsible? You do your work. You, therefore, are responsible. How?' she asked.

He told her about his meetings with Marisa Moreno and why she was of interest to him. The finding of the disks in the dead Russian mafioso's briefcase. The intensifying of his interrogations of Marisa. The phone calls. The phone call he'd had just before he'd seen her last night.

'So these people are watching you,' she said. 'Which means they've been watching my house, me, my children…'

'That's possible.'

'You knew that,' she said and turned away from him to look out of the black window, the lamp and the two of them reflected back to her, but now transformed in her mind to a scene of gross betrayal.

'I've been threatened before,' he said. 'It's a classic scare tactic, a delaying tactic. It's done to slow me down. To distract.'

'Well, this is a major fucking distraction,' she said, turning on him. 'My son…'

She stopped, something else occurring to her.

'They did the same thing four years ago,' she said. 'I don't know how I could have forgotten that because… how could I forget that?'

She walked away from him and turned back, like a lawyer.

'It was one of the reasons I broke it off with you four years ago,' she said.

'The photograph.'

'The red cross on the photograph,' she said. 'The red marker pen that crossed out my family. People coming into my home, leaving the television on and crossing out my family. That was one of the reasons I couldn't carry on with you the last time. How am I supposed to live with that?'

'You shouldn't have to,' said Falcon.

'They were Russians, too,' she said, eyes fierce, mouth stretched tight across her teeth.

'They were, but a different group. The two men who sanctioned that are now dead.'

'Who killed them?' she asked, finding herself livid now, all logic gone, the stress of the day suddenly releasing itself into her veins, her heart thundering in her chest. 'Or doesn't it matter who killed who? People kill each other all the fucking time. That's who you deal with, Javier – killers. They are your meat and drink.'

'This isn't a good idea,' he said. 'I should go.'

She was on him in a flash, hitting him with both her fists high on his chest, knocking him back against the wall.

'You brought those people into my house the last time,' she said. 'And now, just as I've let you back into my… into everything… they're back.'

He grabbed her wrists. She tore them out of his hands, pummelled him about the head and shoulders until he managed to get hold of them again. He pulled her to him.

'The most important thing for you to understand, Consuelo,' he said, looking into her livid face, 'is that none of this is your fault.'

That turned something in her, switched something off. He didn't like it. The passion disappeared. Her blue eyes turned to ice. She pushed herself away from him, eased herself out of his slackening grip. Backed away into the centre of the room, folded her arms.

'I don't want to see you again,' she said. 'I don't want your world in mine ever again. You are responsible for Dario's abduction and I cannot forgive you. Even if you bring him back to me tomorrow you will never be forgiven for what you have done. I want you to leave and I don't want you ever to come back.'

She turned her back on him. He could see its tense muscularity under the light top and could find no words to soften it. And he realized what this was all about. She was punishing herself. She held herself completely responsible. She had taken her eye off Dario for the sake of some stupid phone call from an idiot estate agent trying to sell her something she didn't want, and that was why he'd been kidnapped. And no amount of his taking the blame on to himself was going to change that. He unlocked the door, left the room, went down the stairs and out into the suffocating night, full of the uneasy susurrating of the trees and the low, distant threat of the city grinding out its future. Cristina Ferrera started at the appearance of Falcon in the frame of the driver's window.

'You told her,' she said, seeing it in his face.

He looked off down Calle Hiniesta and nodded.

'Then I'm glad I didn't call,' she said.

'What's happened?'

'Nothing. The light's on, but I'm not convinced she's there.'

She got out of the car. They looked up at the apartment. Light shone on to the roof terrace, illuminating the plant life growing around it.

'I got here around eleven thirty and I haven't seen anything move.'

'Have you looked at the studio?'

'It's in darkness.'

'Let's call her,' he said, and punched the number into his mobile. No answer.

'Ring the bell?' asked Ferrera.

They crossed the square in front of Santa Isabel, past the bars on Calle Vergara, which at 12.45 a.m. were now shut. Falcon pressed the buzzer. Ferrera stood back in the street.

'I can hear it buzzing,' she said.

'Nobody home.'

'Or too drunk… dead to the world.'

'You didn't leave the lights on when you took her back home and put her to bed?'

'No.'

'Saturday night?'

'She didn't look like she was going anywhere.'

'Let's take a look at the studio,' he said. 'When did you last check it?'

'About half an hour ago.'

They headed down Calle Bustos Tavera and found the arched entrance in profound darkness. They turned on their pen torches and went into the courtyard, where a hot breeze played lazily around the rusted remains of chassis and rejected white goods. Falcon led the way. A dog barked some way off. A torch beam picked up two small discs of reflected light. The cat didn't move until it felt too exposed, and then it turned and shrank away into the shadows. The metal steps up to the studio shook under their weight, the masked window had a crack in it he didn't remember. He reached the landing in front of the door, Ferrera, two steps below. Falcon pushed the door, which gave way. He put the pen torch in his mouth, took out a packet of latex gloves and put them on.

'This doesn't feel right,' he said.